Cosmopragmatics and petabytes

Abstract

How do people represent everything all at once, in a single space? A cosmogram is any object that tries to do just that. The first uses of the term were in religious studies, but cosmograms also appear within the sciences. I will first offer a handful of examples to flesh out the idea of cosmopragmatics or cosmograms in use. I’ll then consider examples from the nineteenth century, an age of utopias and media revolutions. Finally, I will raise some current questions concerning cloud computing and big data, and their “cosmopragmatic” potentials, asking whether these new modes of accessing the world, these new digital windows, create sturdy arks for navigating the sea of information.